New Post, New Poem

Carnival Night

"Cross my palm with silver,"
The blind old gypsy said;
Her robe was silver satin,
And the turban she wore was red;
And golden rings swung from her ears,
And her eyes stared without sight,
When I went to have my fortune told
Near the end of carnival night.

I gave her all the coins I had,
Not caring what tale she spun;
For the future I dreamed, she would never guess,
And I'd hear of no other one;
For I dreamed of Robin only,
And Robin I would wed;
But "The bird you love will fly away
And never return," she said.

I felt a chill run up my spine,
And I fled the gypsy's tent,
Telling myself she spoke by chance,
That it couldn't be Robin she meant.
But scarcely a year and a day had passed,
When the golden bird took flight;
And I recalled what the gypsy said
Near the end of carnival night.

By JRC, 9/29/13

*

A lady just called me from Bellevue, Nebraska. She said that Aunt Nell (Cage) Reis was her grandmother, and she wanted information about Nell's generation of Cages, and information about the Cage "plantation" in Mississippi. I don't know anything about the plantation, but I snail-mailed her a list of all of DeWitt Barnett and Mary Hatfield Cage's children that I knew, or knew about.